that GREEN blog

Dartington’s Schumacher College is offering members of the local community a chance to develop skills in growing their own produce and sustainably working land for maximum benefit. 

The forward-looking College, which has an international reputation for its education work in environmental and social sustainability, will host a series of one-day practical sessions from 19th to 21st July, with contributions from leading land and agricultural practitioners. 

Entitled Practical Skills for Sustainable Local Food, the sessions will demonstrate sustainable agriculture in action and teach participants how to grow and harvest their own vegetables, herbs and crops.

Educator and professional gardener Dyane Osborne, who holds a degree in Environmental Education from specialist agricultural school Bicton College, leads the course. Martin Crawford, founder of the Agroforestry Research Trust, will demonstrate methods used in the Forest Garden at Dartington; Horticulturalist Nick Gooderham will show students around the pioneering School Farm; and Permaculture expert Rhamis Kent will explain how agriculture can transform urban areas for the better, using his regeneration work in Detroit as an example.

In order to get a real flavour of College life, Taster Day students also have the opportunity to engage with the community living ethos – an essential part of the Schumacher experience. In supervised morning and afternoon sessions, students can spend time in the Schumacher kitchen, playing their part in the creation of the delicious vegetarian food that the College has become famous for or in discussion forums and workshops.

The taster days take place on Monday 19th July, Tuesday 20th July and Wednesday 21st July. Each one-day session costs £75 and includes access all tuition and course materials; vegetarian lunch and refreshments; and access to the College’s Open Evening with Rhamis Kent on Tuesday 20th July.

Full information can be found at www.schumachercollege.org.uk and you can book your place by contacting Schumacher College on 01803 865934 or admin@schumachercollege.org.uk.

ENDS

For more information, please contact Katrina Hurford on 01803 847026 or k.hurford@dartington.org

About Schumacher College and Dartington

Schumacher College is a department of The Dartington Hall Trust.

Dartington is an international centre for the arts, social justice and sustainability – a unique place where enterprise, creativity, social and environmental responsibility flourish together.  In our charitable activities, we work to create social change in collaboration with pioneering thinkers, artists, entrepreneurs and activists in the UK and around the world.   Our enterprise activities include the Cider Press Shopping Centre with 15 boutique shops, a conference centre with accommodation and the award-winning White Hart restaurant and bar. Over 1 million visitors annually come to visit Dartington. For more information, visit www.dartington.org.

ORGANIZATIONAL SIGN-ON STATEMENT WILL BE RELEASED WEDNESDAY TOO

MAKE SURE YOUR GROUP IS ON

Dear Friends,

According to numerous reports, Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) have decided to go ahead and release their climate bill on Wednesday, May 12, without the backing of Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and despite the ongoing calamity of the BP Gulf oil spill.

We don’t expect the bill to be markedly different from what we had previously reported: it will be a taxpayer-funded bonanza for the nuclear power industry, will still support offshore oil drilling (though perhaps a bit less stridently than before), will still support “clean coal,” will still remove EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, and will still seek vastly insufficient carbon reductions.

We intend to go ahead and release a grassroots statement blasting the bill and its dirty energy provisions on Wednesday as well. It will be important to get into the same news cycle as the bill’s release. Because it is obviously no longer being released on the Chernobyl anniversary, we have reworked the statement. It is below, along with the current list of signers.

Organizations: Please check the list and make sure your group has signed on. If you haven’t yet signed on, please consider doing so. To sign on: send your name, organization, city and state to nirsnet@nirs.org.

If you have signed on, please check to make sure you are properly listed, and let us know of any changes.

Individuals: We know you want to have a say too! But we can’t send out 100-page press releases with everyone’s names on them! So we are preparing a new Senate letter and letter-to-the-editor campaign, and we’ll get that out to you on Wednesday or Thursday.

We hope you’ll keep supporting our efforts with your activism and your financial help. You are what makes this work possible. If you can make a tax-deductible donation to our outreach fund, please do so here.

Thanks for all you do,

Michael Mariotte
Executive Director
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
nirsnet@nirs.org
www.nirs.org

Daily Exposures Cause Far More Cancers Than Once Thought, a Presidential Panel Says

ABC News – May 6, 2010

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/cancers-environment-grossly-underestimated-presidential-panel/story?id=10568354

all on one page: — http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=10568354

The full report (240 pp) is available online at

http://deainfo.nci.nih.gov/advisory/pcp/pcp08-09rpt/PCP_Report_08-09_508.pdf

From The National Museum of the American Indian blog, a post by Shawn Termin:

For many New Yorkers, “Green is the new black,” according to Johanna Gorelick, Head of Education at the NMAI, Heye Center in New York City.  Green markets have popped up in neighborhoods throughout the five NYC boroughs; shoppers use reusable material totes instead of plastic and paper bags; and dedicated, earth-centric citizens of the Big Apple are anxious to learn about the many aspects of the sustainable food movement.  This was evidenced by an attendance of approximately 350 museum visitors who flocked to the recent Earth Day program, Native Views on Sustainable Foods, at the NMAI, Heye Center in New York on April 22, 2010.

Three prominent speakers participated in the programming.  Winona LaDuke (Anishinabe), Executive Director of Honor the Earth; Alex Sando (Jemez Pueblo), representative of Native Seeds/SEARCH; and Kenneth Zontek, author of Buffalo Nation:  American Indian Efforts to Restore the Bison.

Full post here ::: http://blog.nmai.si.edu/main/2010/05/for-new-yorkers-green-is-the-new-black.html

I’m getting set for a long summer road trip with my friends. I know we won’t be doing the atmosphere any favors by driving cross-country, but we’d like to limit the damage as much as we can. Does it matter where we stop for gas along the way? Is one brand of pumping station better than another?

It’s true that driving coast-to-coast is going to produce some heavy carbon emissions, but there are some ways to reduce your impact on the environment. You can save energy, for example, by keeping your windows closed—and your A/C on—as you coast down the highway. When you stop to refuel, don’t bother getting high-octane gas if your vehicle isn’t designed to use it. And, as you suggest in your question, try to avoid the pump stations run by the world’s nastiest corporate villains.

No fossil fuel company has a clean record when it comes to the environment. Drilling, transporting, and refining oil produces massive amounts of greenhouse gas. The industry also pollutes the air with soot and other chemicals, and as we’ve seen in recent weeks, companies like BP end up releasing tons of hazardous waste into oceans and streams. Even so, some companies are more diligent about their environmental responsibilities than others. Activist groups have made an attempt to rank the major oil companies according to their records; see, for example, the lists compiled by Greenopia, Sierra Club, and the Better World Handbook. While Greenopia’s list is the most up-to-date, it includes both the ubiquitous “supermajor” oil companies (like ExxonMobil and Chevron) and smaller refiners whose gas stations might be harder to find. To simplify things, let’s separate out the big and the small, and focus on the two metrics that should be first in your mind when you’re about to fill up your tank: the amount of oil spilled by each company and the amount of CO2 emitted per barrel of production.

Article continues at URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2251727/